


Preparation

by likeadeuce



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:19:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cordelia Chase doesn't give up that easily.  After their ill-fated first kiss, Cordelia goes looking for Wesley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preparation

Cordelia Chase straightened the red silk blouse she had chosen especially for the occasion, took ten deep breaths of decreasing speed (a relaxation technique her life coach had sworn by, back when the family could still afford her), and raised her hand to knock on the door.

Sounds of scrambling inside, something metal crashing to the ground, a murmured Dammit!. Finally silence and an even, suspiciously calm, "Hello?"

"Wesley, open up! It's Cordelia!" She raised her hand to bang again, for good measure, but her fist met air as the door swung open.

In fact, her fist almost met Wesley, except that he ducked out of the way, moving at the same time to put on his glasses. His hair looked disheveled, like something had nested in it, his tie was undone, and he squinted at her. "Cordelia?" he repeated, as though he had to confirm her identity. "Please. Come in." Then he winced, backed up, and started fumbling at his pockets. "I mean – be thou spirit of the night or goblin damned –"

Stepping through the doorway, she held up a hand. "I am SO not a vampire." Leveling her gaze at him, she said, "And if I was? You'd be dead." Stepping away from her, he started rubbing his neck, not quite able to lift his eyes from the floor.

"So," he said, "It's not that I object, but you're the last person I expected – after today's -- "

_Worst first kiss ever?_ she thought. But she didn't actually say it, which was the first thing that proved to her she was really intent on doing what she had come here to do. Instead, she stepped toward him, hands behind her back to show off the top to it's full advantage, and gave him her best Miss America smile. "I was just out for a drive. Thinking about how, you know, we're probably all going to die tomorrow. And I've never –" She let the words hang in the air. She wasn't exactly what you'd call a shy girl, but she didn't want to be the one to. . .well. . .say it.

"Never. . ." Wesley tilted his head, as if he expected her to say more, then finally filled in, "been to my apartment?"

"Oh, screw it." She was no good at coy. Less than twenty-four hours to live, probably, so this wasn't the time to start. Cordelia reached her hands up, clasped them around the back of his head, and pulled his mouth down to meet hers. He didn't resist, but when her mouth was open, his was closed. Cordelia tried to shut her lips, while Wesley opened his, but then he sputtered, choked, and turned aside, doubled over in a coughing fit.

"Sorry," he gasped, and straightened himself. "That was unexpected, I. . ." He pulled off his glasses and set them on the counter, ". . .wasn't prepared, but. . " Now he leaned in eagerly toward her. Their noses bumped, and he backed off to come in at a different angle. This time, his teeth pushed against her lip, and when they finally both got their mouths open at the same time, he managed to suck on her tongue and –

"All right all right all right!" Cordelia pushed her hand into his breastbone. "Clearly,"  
she said, wiping the spit off her cheek, "Some people were never meant to kiss each other."

"Yes yes," Wesley murmured, looking down, reaching for his glasses again. "I'm terribly sorry but. . ."

"You have a bed in here, right?"

His hand froze with his glasses halfway to his eyes. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Do you have a bed?" she repeated. He kept staring. "I know what you're thinking. But I'm eighteen years old. I can make own choices and my parents think I'm at an all-night pre-grad party, and it doesn't really matter how old I am, since, after tomorrow the chances are pretty good that neither of us is getting any older – well, honestly you and me are probably each other's last best chance for getting some . . ."

"Yes." Pushing his glasses down on his nose, Wesley repeated, "Yes. Yes, I do. I have a bed."

*

And, technically speaking, he did. A single bed, with one pillow, sheets that didn't match, and a rumpled plaid throw that he had probably bought at Target the day he moved in. It was the kind of bed she had seen in the dorm rooms of UCSD boys who thought they could pour enough beer in her to get lucky. Like the whole apartment – books stacked in boxes, a couple art posters leaning against the wall with the plastic and cardboard still attached – it had the look of a temporary arrangement. It wasn't a bed that belonged to a man who expected to settle in and stay. And it certainly wasn't the bed of a man who expected to share it with anyone, any time soon. Cordelia sat on the edge of the small bed, strangely saddened by the bareness of the room. But she smiled as she raised her hands over her head.

Wesley lifted the bottom of her blouse and pulled it off, over her hands. Then he leaned in and started kissing her neck and collarbone. His lips felt warm on her skin, making her more aware of her bare arms and belly. She shivered, feeling goosebumps rise on her body, while Wesley's long fingers worked on the back of her bra. They worked and they worked, rubbing gently against her skin, and so she let him keep at it, until he finally grunted in frustration.

"Let me," she said.

"No, I've almost got. . ." He blew the words against her skin.

Cordelia almost entirely kept herself from laughing as she shivered away from him and, in one quick motion, undid the snap at the front of the brassiere.

"Dammit!" he groaned, as she shrugged her flesh free. "I swear, those diabolical contraptions must be designed by. . ." But then his nearsighted focus stopped to take in her smooth, pale breasts. "Those, on the other hand. . ."

Cordelia leaned back onto her hands arching her back, and she wasn't quite sure how he managed the angle of his neck as his lips pressed to her aureole. She lay all the way down now – she thought she had better, before Wesley strained something – and with the quick motions of his tongue against her hardening nipple, she thought that it didn't make sense, if he could do that to her, he ought to be a better kisser.

"Come on, now, let me. . ." she said, and pulled herself all the way on the bed. Now she lay flat on top of the sheet. Wesley knelt with one knee on either side of hers, and started to undo his own shirt. She reached up a hand to rub through the hair on his chest. As he gave a soft sigh, she moved the other hand down and started to pull her skirt down around her waist. Seeing her intent, he reached down and helped her strip it off, then hooked both thumbs under the waistband of her panties and pulled them down, leaving nothing between her body and air.

Cordelia wasn't used to being naked, not even alone, in a room by himself. Now the eyes of this man – this handsome, sophisticated, unmistakably grown-up man -- were on her, tracing the thin line of hair from her navel down to her. . .and now she was glad she had taken the time to trim her "intimate area." Per guidelines in the April Cosmo, she had left only a small, sparse "landing strip." Although exactly how much of him was supposed to land where, and where it went after that, she was considerably less certain.

Sliding his fingers down that landing strip, Wesley stopped for a second to part her labia and slide the tips of two long fingers inside her. Cordelia shuddered, grabbing a fistful of Wesley's blanket in each hand. A few boys had begged their way this far and no further, but the feeling was still odd; Cordelia rarely even touched herself and when she heard other girls whisper and joke about it in the restroom, she always felt a little lame because, Cosmo notwithstanding, it wasn't something that had ever really worked for her.

Now Wesley's fingers were moving inside her and it felt not exactly bad, but not exactly sexy – she still hadn't gotten past 'weird' – and she didn't want Wesley to start thinking about what might be wrong with her – was she strange, was she cold, whatever the hell that meant and why on earth didn't this feel as incredible as Cordelia wanted it to?

She raised her hands to his belt. He still knelt above her, and the light in the room was not the greatest, but she thought she could detect some motion through the immaculate crease of those ridiculously well-tailored pants. She had some experience with this kind of feeling too – mostly in the dark, mostly through fabric, and for God's sake she was in a hurry for something new. She peeled back the belt and opened the button, then slid her hand inside what felt like silk boxer shorts. Wesley moved his hand out of her and used it to brace himself against the bed. "Cor- del- ia," he gasped, as she closed her fingers around him. "Could you. . .?"

"Shh. This is nice," she crooned, sliding her hand down the shaft of his – how was she even supposed to think of it? 'Penis' sounded like health class, 'dick' like a twelve-year-old, 'cock' like something from a seventies' porno, and every other word she could think of was worse. She slid her hand down it which was hard already, getting harder in her hand, bare flesh against her flesh, and she wasn't even sure what she meant by 'nice,' except, she supposed, big, and she guessed it was big, sort of, vaguely, at least not small, not by the standards of the few that she had fumbled with in hasty embarrassed movements, and she knew that 'big' was supposed to be a good thing, except honestly that kind of scared her, to think about so much of this big hard strange thing pushing inside her, his body moving in her body.

"Cordelia, I need. . ." She nodded, and lay back as he slid all the way out of his pants, and now he lowered his body so that he almost lay on top of her, but braced above her with his hands, so that there was still space between her bodies, and there was cold air between them but also warmth of his skin, just inches from hers.

She raised her hand again and settled it gently around him, running her thumb down its length, thinking, nice?, remembering how painful it could still be to shove in something as small as a tampon, and she wondered if even letting herself think that made her feel prudish and tight, and she remembered the boys who had called her stuck-up and frigid and how much she hated it and how much more she hated wondering if it might turn out to be true and whether all the good reasons she always told herself she had for waiting until she was older might just have been that, being afraid to find out if it was true and. . .

"Cordelia." Wesley's breath brushed her neck as he spoke. "You need to. . ."

"Condom, got it. Just a. . ." She started to reach for the pillow where she had discreetly deposited her provisions.

"Yes," he said in a thin voice, "but also you need. . ."

"Got that too. Extra-lubey for my first time."

He stopped moving. "For your –" He half-choked on the word "what?"

"My first time. I said that. The world might end tomorrow and I don't want to die a virgin."

"Cordelia, I promise, you never said. . ."

"It's all right, Wesley." She gave him another long slow rub with her thumb, and his -- okay, she had to think of it as something -- cock seemed to moved against her hand. "I know what I'm –"

"Oh, bloody hell!" At first she didn't know why Wesley was moving. But as he slid out of her hand, she realized that it was softening, and by the time he crashed on his back beside her, she noticed the wetness and. . ..

"Ewww!" She spread her fingers, and the mess slid down her palm. "Tissue!" she squeaked sitting up, and when he didn't move, she again demanded, "Tissue !!!"

He reached to the end table handed her a box, printed with pink and silver daffodils, and with her clean hand she ripped out one – two – three Kleenex, decided not to think about what that box was doing so close to his bed in the first place, and threw it back at him.

"Ouch!" The box bounced off Wesley's shoulder onto the floor and, while he bent to retrieve it, Cordelia scrubbed furiously against her hand.

"What did you have to go and do that for?"

Sitting straight, he gave her a long cool stare. When he finally spoke, his words came slowly: "To piss you off."

"Well –" She closed a tissue around the wad of – no, she didn't even want to think about the name for that – and threw it at him. "Congratulations, because it worked."

"I tried to tell you to stop." He picked up the tissue, then took a fresh one from the box and bent down to, she presumed, wipe the remaining mess from his own thigh.

"You didn't try very hard."

"You were giving me a hand job. What did you think was going to happen?" He rose and tossed all the tissues toward the garbage can, then sat down and pulled the sheet over his lap.

His gaze lingered on her, and Cordelia realized that she sat in front of him, totally naked, while he had decided to cover himself with the sheet. Scowling, she pulled the throw around her shoulders, draping it over her breasts, and rocked back. "What I thought is that you're a grown-up. . .person, and you might have a little more self-control than a seventeen-year-old boy."

"Let's just say I was overwhelmed by your beauty." But he didn't speak like he meant it. His tone was dry, almost caustic, and totally new to her. Different from the way he talked to the slayers or Giles, certainly different from the super-formal courtesy he had always directed towards her. She thought, strangely, of a demon she had come across while researching in one of the musty old texts, a green-faced thing with millions of spikes that shot out at the first sign of a threat, ready to poison anything that came too close. The thought flitted across her mind that she didn't really know Wesley at all. That none of them did. It was just possible that nobody in Sunnydale had seen the real Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Not even Cordelia. Just maybe, she thought, especially not Cordelia.

She could have kept sparring with him, if that was what she really wanted, but what would be the point? Her mission tonight was to get devirginized, and she wasn't going to let male ego crap distract her. If she wanted that, she could still be with Xander Harris. Instead, she tossed her head, making sure he got a good look at that gorgeous flowing hair. "So when do we get to try this again?"

"Again?" His eyes bored into her, like she might be joking, and he didn't want to fall for it. Cordelia dropped the blanket and stretched on her side on the bed. Giving him a good look at her bare breasts and belly, trusting in these to defuse any argument. Wesley relaxed into a faint smile. Now that he realized she wasn't going to walk right out on him, his poison spines were starting to settle back against his skin. But it couldn't be quite the same again. Cordelia knew they were there. Still, when he spoke, it was to poke cautious fun at himself. "I'm afraid this is one situation in which you'd rather have the seventeen-year-old. Still –" He pressed his hand onto the mattress beside him and gave her a significant look. "If you don't mind staying for a while, I'm sure we could pass the time –"

"More kissing?" And now she gave a playful smile. "Because that's worked so well?"

"In a manner of speaking." He patted the mattress again. "Come here."

And maybe because it was so rare for a man to tell her what to do, Cordelia couldn't think of anything to do but come there.

She sat, and he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Lie down." And pushing her gently, but with unmistakable force, he guided her to lie back across the bed. Cordelia closed her eyes, and in a moment, she felt his warm breath against her navel. He pressed his lips to the smooth skin and traced a line down her body. He turned moved aside to kiss her smooth inner thigh. A sensation traveled up Cordelia's leg, and though she didn't entirely want to, she felt herself laughing.

"Something's funny?" he managed to mumble, with his mouth against her leg.

"No – just –keep going."

He returned his lips to her other thigh, and she giggled again.

He stopped. "What?"

"Sorry," she said. "But it tickles."

"Tickles?" he repeated, with slight disbelief. "Forget the foreplay, then."

Now he slid right down the landing strip, and rubbed the wide center of his tongue against her clit. Cordelia shuddered, and reached down to put a hand in his hair. His tongue pressed deeper into her, and an involuntary twitch ran through her leg. Wesley moved his head slightly back, just as Cordelia swung her leg inward. Not on purpose, just responding to the unaccustomed pressure. And it was just bad timing when the inside of her knee collided with his face.

"Oww!" He pressed a hand to his face, and let out a stream of what she assumed was profanity in British. Rocking back on his heels, he glared at her, and she shrugged, lamely, "Sorry?"

"Sorry?" he gasped and, pressing a palm to his face, said, "I think you broke my cheekbone!"

"Oh no, not your number one weapon in the fight against evil." Pulling her legs together she leaned over and gingerly pressed a finger to the spot under his eye. "Oh, that won't even leave a bruise. And if it does, you can pretend a demon did it."

"Pretend?" he muttered, glowering at her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He shook his head, and she started to stand.

Wesley, still kneeling dropped his hand from his face. "Are we done?" For some reason he actually looked surprised.

"I wouldn't want to injure you." She bent over the bed, looking for her clothes, as Wesley rose and sat next to her. He reached out for her arm, but she shook him off. "No, I can take a hint. This isn't meant to happen. Anyway, it felt weird." Which was true, she thought, remembering the sensation of his tongue inside her. She didn't necessarily mean weird as in bad, just, well -- weird.

"Cordelia, I'm sure if you'd just allow yourself to relax. . ."

"Look who's talking, Minuteman." She pulled her arm away from him and started to put on her skirt. "Maybe you're just not very good at this."

Wesley got into the bed and sat, pulling the sheet up to his stomach. "You're not exactly getting any Nobel Prizes for Sex, yourself."

And, all right, she might have asked for it. Still, nobody talked to Cordelia Chase like that, and she lowered her head and glared to make sure he knew it. "I'm the blushing virgin here. You're supposed to know what's going on. You have had sex before, right? With, you know, a woman?"

He closed his eyes and bit down on his lip, as if he had a lot more to say than the few words he finally uttered. "With women, yes."

"Human women?"

Now with a thin smile, he said, "Allegedly." He let a moment pass, then said, "You've got a little bit of a mean streak, don't you?"

"Who? Me?" She widened her eyes in put-on shock, then rolled thm. "Come on. You've noticed me being mean before."

"Yes, but. . not to me. Suddenly I feel like I've been demoted to Xanderhood."

She turned, buttoning her blouse, and looked at him coolly. "You've seen things tonight that Xander Harris never got to do anything but dream about, and you know why? Because I wasn't about to use myself up on some guy I met in Sunnydale. I was going to go to college and major in fashion merchandising, and I was going to rush Tri Sig and go out with Kappas and lose my virginity to the second boy I dated in my sophomore year. That's been my plan, for as long as I can remember, only I was trying to make an exception for eminent death and an English accent but clearly –" And she stomped her bare foot, feeling every bit like a five-year-old having a tantrum, but goddamn, she was entitled.

"Clearly," Wesley interrupted. "Someone's trying to tell us something. Like maybe we won't die tomorrow."

"Hey –" Cordy frowned. "You just might be right." She nodded. "Yes, that's gotta be what it means. We – well, I don't know about you. You could still be screwed. But me? This must mean I've got to survive graduation, at least."

"Yes," Wesley said gravely. "Maybe God has a plan for you."

"Really?" Cordelia's eyes widened, and she stared at him. It sounded a little crazy, but then, Wesely knew all about sacred duties and chosen ones. "What's the Council's position on the whole God thing, anyway?"

"It's complicated. But I suppose we could presume that – to borrow a phrase from Milton – the powers that be have something in mind for you."

"Milton who?"

"Milton Keynes. Bloke with the corner office at Council Headquarters. Real know-it-all." And something about his smile made her realize he'd been playing with her.

She reached down and swatted him across the shoulder. "Just enjoy that joke that only you get." She leaned down to place an absent-minded kiss on his forehead, and was surprised when his grip tightened around her arm.

"Don't go away mad," said Wesley. "Most days you're the only person in this bloody town that I can stand."

"Oh." She smiled. "People say that to me – exactly never. So – thank you."

"Thank you," he repeated. Then he swallowed, and she could see him hesitate about whether to go on. So she raised an eyebrow at him, and he quietly said, "That is what it's like, you know." She shook her head, not understanding. "Sex. I mean – not – like -- that, thank God, all the time. But it's messy and it's confusing and it takes work and if you go in thinking you're living in a fairy tale –" He smiled. "So maybe this was good preparation."

"Maybe." She reached a hand down to ruffle his hair. "Now tell me, Obi-Wan. Why didn't you give me these words of wisdom before you tried to take advantage of my naivete?"

"Because. . ." A smile played on his lips. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to. Because every once in a while it turns out that you beat the ridiculous odds and for a few minutes everything actually does feel as perfect as you want it to be."

She frowned. "Did that ever happen to you?"

His tongue darted out, wetting his lips, keeping the smile half in check. "Yes."

She waited for him to go on, but he didn't. "Sounds like a good story," she finally said.

"Yes," he agreed.

"You're not gonna tell me?"

"No," he said. "Because one day you'll find out for yourself." He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her down, so that he could kiss the crown of her head. His last words were so quiet that she barely heard them, and yet they echoed long after she left his bedroom. "You have a lot of time to find out. And I don't want to spoil the surprise."


End file.
